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ST. LOUIS, Mo. ― When the Kawasaki Invitational kicks off
Friday, PBR Livestock Director Cody Lambert will
already have 14 of the 15 bulls for Sunday's Built Ford Tough
Championship Round chosen. At a three-day event, it's not uncommon
for five or six short round spots to be left open, and the fact
that the short round pen is nearly complete before the event begins
indicates that we will see an exceptionally strong group of bulls
Sunday.

"We'll have Bushwacker,
Smackdown, Shepherd Hills Tested,
King Lopez, Jeff Robinson's New Holland
PowerStar, and Stanley FatMax," Lambert
said. "We've got Southpaw, who has been rank
lately, and Rock & Roll, who is still
unridden. I think 20T Train Wreck and 708
Delco may be the two best draws in the short round, if
you're thinking of an easier one, and they really aren't that
easy."

Lambert added that the long round bulls in St. Louis should be
pretty strong as well.

"With D&H Cattle, Chad Berger, Gene Owens, New Frontier, and
K Bar C coming, there's a lot of depth," Lambert said. "Kent Cox
will have a few bulls. There's a new contractor, who happens to be
an 18-year-old girl from Weatherford, Texas, ― Paige Stout ― who
will have five bulls in Round 1, and they are all good looking
bulls we haven't seen before. We'll have to see how well they deal
with the step up to the Built Ford Tough Series level, because it's
usually quite a bit different environment for bulls, with all the
lights and the noise."

D&H Cattle will bring a full load of bulls to St. Louis,
nearly all of them borderline short round-quality bulls. We'll see
48U Rockie Smooth, who Sean Willingham rode en
route to winning the event in Oklahoma City. 33W Western
Show, a new bull Lambert is impressed with, is making his
debut here.

"Their program is about 30 years old now, and they just keep
producing numbers of great bulls," Lambert said. "They have the
numbers working in their favor ― they produce more bull calves than
just about anyone, and their program is a big influence on other
contractors. They sell bulls, heifers, and retired bulls to other
people for breeding purposes, and those genetics have produced
great PBR bulls for other programs. They also compete with their
younger bulls in the ABBI, and if they see a bull from another
breeder's program that they like, they will try to buy him, and use
him in their breeding program as well."